Page 128 of Sway's Peace
Instead of answering, she took his hand and searched his curious expression. “Are you okay?”
“Of course,” he responded immediately, still smiling. “They barely touched me.”
“That’s not really what I meant.”
The arch of his lips became strained but it was only for a moment before it fell. He let out a breath as he turned, taking his own seat. But he didn’t release her hand, pulling her with him, then across his lap. He wrapped his arms around her, resting his head on her chest.
She smiled, petting her hand down the feathers of his flattened crest. For a long minute, they just stayed like that. She couldn’t imagine what he was going through. She had her own complaints about her family, but one thing she couldn’t say was that they’d ever abandoned her like this. If anything, she’s the one who abandoned them. But they’d also never made it a secret that she was more of a commodity than a child. Veesway had promised love and understanding and togetherness. Only to then immediately turn his back on those words.
And Grace could kind of understand. Sway’s past wasn’t a good one. She didn’t even think he could be accused of being a goodperson. If there was a Hell, he was almost certainly already condemned to go there. He never expressed regret for the things he did. Even if he had been forced to do them at first, he’d continuously made those choices as he got older and felt no qualms about it now.
No, certainly he was damned.
But if he was damned, then she’d rather be damned with him than condemn him to such a fate alone. If there was a price to pay for his crimes, she wanted to pay it with him. If he had a burden, she wanted to help him bear it.
But that was her choice. And clearly not one that Veesway wanted to make. But even if he could understand why Veesway had turned his back on his own son, that didn’t mean that it would hurt Sway any less.
“Do you regret it?” She finally asked some time later.
He didn’t answer immediately. Considering his words before speaking. And when he finally spoke, it was slowly, haltingly.
“My people are naturally predisposed to abhor violence. It’s part of who we are as surely as our crest or our tail. The only reason we have natural defenses is to protect ourselves and our nests from predators. Even then, thickened skin isn’t the most dangerous of defenses. Claws and fangs and venom are much more common, and much more dangerous. My people would rather beat a problem back than just destroy it outright.”
“Not all people are the same,” she said, speaking just as cautiously as him. “There are differences in every population.”
“I suppose,” he agreed with a long sigh. “I hated it at first. When the Master would make me hurt others. It made me sick tomy stomach. But that gradually faded. And then I just didn’t like it. But that eventually faded too.
“One day I was… doing something to someone,” he hedged carefully, like he didn’t want to tell her exactly what he was doing. “And as he was screaming, I found it annoying. It wasn’t tragic anymore. It wasn’t painful. It was just irritating. I was torturing this male, and his screams were an annoyance. I realized then that I had stopped caring about people. I didn’t care if I caused them pain. I didn’t care if they died. I just… didn’t care.”
His voice was hard. Tight. Waiting for condemnation.
Grace kissed his forehead. “I understand.”
He finally lifted his head, frowning at her. “You understand?”
She nodded, giving him a gentle smile and repeated, a bit more firmly. “I understand. As terrible as it sounds, people can build up a tolerance to even the worst things. If it doesn’t leave you scarred, it can leave you numb. And I understand. I really do.”
Sway blinked at her once, staring for a long moment, before his expression relaxed. He didn’t smile at her, but he lost some of the tension fluffing his feathers. “I’m haunted by the memories of my past. Not because I can’t handle them, but because I feel like I have to feel guilty, and I don’t. That part of me was lost in Rik-Vane. I think, by trying to reclaim my pacifism, I was trying to revive that part of myself.
“I never demanded that Tanin allow me a life of non-violence when I joined him. If he had just offered me escape, I might have gone with him anyway.He’sthe one who made that offer to me. And I took it, thinking it was something I should do.
“But I’ve struggled with it. With the ideal. With the concept. I’ve only hurt those I absolutely had to since Tanin made me that promise, and I haven’t killed anyone. But it weighed on me. Not the act of being a pacifist. It was the hypocrisy.”
Grace cocked her head curiously. Staring at him as his face tightened. He was staring at her chest, but he was looking through her. Seeing only his own thoughts and memories. His grip on her waist tightening as he talked through his epiphany.
“I killed so many people. I hurt all of them first. In… unspeakably cruel ways. Please, don’t think I’m exaggerating, Grace, when I tell you that I amnota good male. The things I’ve done are certainly enough to earn me death. And the only mitigating circumstance is that all the people I killed were denizens of Rik-Vane. Males and females just as guilty and horrid as myself. Though, really, considering all the things I did to them, does it even matter?
“Calling myself a pacifist was a joke,” he hissed, his tone full of malice and self-hatred. “A pathetic one. I wasn’t being a pacifist. I was being a coward who refused to fight alongside my brothers who were all putting their lives on the line for our dream. I was being a fool who would rather delude myself than face the truth. And worst of all, I was being a hypocrite. I was not only watching and approving of others around me doing those violent things yet still claiming to be a pacifist, but I was simplynota pacifist. A pacifist doesn’t just refuse to engage in violence. They’re supposed to actively disagree with it. Believe it to be pointless if not outright detrimental. Yet, I would claim the belief only because I thought I should. I amnota pacifist. I never was.”
Grace didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Only holding onto him as Sway caught his breath from the long rant. A diatribe filled with vitriol, all of it aimed at himself. He’d come in contactwith true farasie, ‘real’ pacifists, and not only had they hated him and everything he did, but they showed him how ignorant he was in his beliefs.
But…
“If you ask me, you’re a better pacifist than all of them.”
Sway’s head jerked upright. Staring at her like she had just started speaking in tongues. The shocked disbelief that she could say something so stupid made her laugh.
“Let me be clear,” she said, cradling his head in her hands. “You arenota pacifist. Not by a long shot. But you know what? Neither were they.”
